Rain Gods, James Lee Burke
Rain Gods, James Lee Burke
36 Rating(s)
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

Rain Gods

Author: James Lee Burke

Narrator: Will Patton

Unabridged: 15 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/14/2009


Synopsis

“America’s best novelist” (The Denver Post) brings back one of his most fascinating characters—Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland, cousin to lawman Billy Bob Holland—in this heart-pounding bestseller.

In a heat-cracked border town, the bodies of nine illegal aliens—women and girls, killed execution-style—are unearthed in a shallow grave. Haunted by a past he can’t shake and his own private demons, Hack attempts to untangle the grisly case, which may lead to more bloodshed. Damaged young Iraq vet Pete Flores, who saw too much before fleeing the crime scene, and his girlfriend, Vikki Gaddis, are running for their lives. Sorting through the lowlifes who are hunting down Pete, and with Preacher Jack Collins, a Godfearing serial killer for hire, in the mix, Hack is caught up in a terrifying race for survival—for Pete, Vikki, and himself.

About James Lee Burke

American mystery author, James Lee Burke, was born in Houston, Texas, explaining why most of the lead characters in his novels are Texan. He has won two Edgar awards, which is a very rare experience, and is a bestselling author of two short story collections and over thirty novels. Burke is best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. His Edgar Awards were for Black Cherry and Cimarron Rose. Two of his series were made into screen plays with each movie having a-list actors playing the Robicheaux character (Alec Baldwin - Heaven's Prisoners, and Tommy Lee Jones- In the Electric Mist).

A writer must usually hold down other employment while they attempt to gain a degree of following readers. Burke's various jobs included.......truck driver, newspaper reporter, social worker, land surveyor, unemployment system employee, Job Corps worker, teacher, and finally, novelist.

Burke lives in Montana with his wife, Pearl, two daughters, and four grandchildren. His favorite advice was given by Irving Stone, when Burke was nineteen.......... "Never write a story to pay your gas bill......if you do, be assured your utilities will be turned off".


Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Thomas on 2009-08-10 18:18:51

Yet a third complicated character created by James Lee Burke is introduced in this book. He is a West Texas county sheriff haunted by his experiences as a POW during the Korean War. He faces the dilemma of his much younger female deputy being in love with him. As usual, Burke conjures up some neat bad guys for the action junkies. Finally, there is no one who can read an audio book country like Will Patton.

Goodreads review by Paul on November 01, 2014

The first of this Hackberry Holland trilogy Lay Down My Sword and Shield was released in 1971, it then took James Lee Burke 38 years to pen this sequel and fuck me was it worth the wait, 38 years of wisdom and experience have gone into these characters and it shows. Not for me of course because I’m l......more

Goodreads review by Scott on June 07, 2024

James Lee Burke is a phenomenal writer of crime fiction, and “Rain Gods” (the second book in a series featuring Hackberry Holland, sheriff of a small Texas town) is an excellent crime thriller, but... (And you kind of knew that there was going to be a “but” there, didn’t you? One never just starts a......more

Goodreads review by Carl on May 15, 2012

I’m beset with the voices of Gods, literary and atavistic, screaming at me about why I should or should not care about Burke and his Rain Gods or Burke and anything else he ever wrote. I’m devoted to the guy, but at the same time my literary eye--my English teacher eye? What’s that worth?--sees righ......more

Goodreads review by Dale on November 26, 2013

A dark, wearisome and depressing novel Crime novels come in all sorts of varieties and flavors. At one extreme are the slapstick Evanovich Stephanie Plum books. At the other end come moody and brooding novels like those that James Lee Burke produces. I have read several of his books and I know that t......more

Goodreads review by Adam on December 10, 2009

Decided to start on Burke with a recent one. This seems a summing up of lifetime of themes and disheartening portrait of America. Like a home grown Le Carré or Greene, Burke uses a page turning thriller to capture the tenor of the times so accurately and artfully it will hold up as a historical nove......more


Quotes

"Burke is a deliberate storyteller; he doesn't skimp on the action, but his exploration of human foibles is deep, and his characters are true...Rain Gods is about catching the bad guys, but it's also a moving, melancholy examination of how we do wrong, then try our best to atone." -- Connie Ogle, Miami Herald

"If James Lee Burke has the deepest regional voice in the genre -- and I do believe that's so -- it's because he understands those feelings that keep people connected to the places where they have, or once had, roots...Preacher is one of Burke's most inspired villains..." -- Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"...readers will find some of the best and most memorable prose of Burke's career...It is the narrative...that is the biggest strength of this character-driven novel. Burke is at heart a poet capable of describing the light and the dark in equal measures of the beautiful and horrific, one who can both gradually illuminate the darkness and cast dark shadows across the sun, often within the space of a single short paragraph. Rain Gods is a work of deep, violent and, yes, beautiful magic, a wondrous manifestation of one of our best American authors becoming even better, as improbable and impossible as that may seem." -- Joe Hartlaub, Bookreporter.com

"...there's something so winning about Hackberry Holland, something so perfect for the times in which we're reading...anger and bitterness fuel a fair amount of James Lee Burke's fiction, showing how the best and the worst of us are driven by demons -- the memories of bad family history; of wars past and present; the pull of the bottle; the furious engine that drives some to desire money or power, by whatever means; the slow, seeping poison of grief and regret. In Rain Gods, Burke once again renders the cautionary tale he has perfected over 28 books." -- Susan Larson, New Orleans Times Picayune